The congressman from the 7th District is John Culberson, a conservative Republican first elected in 2000. Culberson grew up in Houston, the son of the owner of an advertising agency. He graduated from Southern Methodist University, South Texas College of Law, and then worked as a civil defense lawyer. In 1986, at age 29, Culberson won a seat in the Texas House, where he served for 14 years. In 2000, Republican Rep. Bill Archer, Bush’s successor in the House, retired after being forced to give up the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee by Republican term limits. The front-runners in the GOP primary were Culberson and Peter Wareing, a Houston merchant banker and son-in-law of Texas oilman Jack Blanton. Culberson led Wareing in the first round 38%-27%. Wareing spent nearly $4 million to Culberson's $650,000, but Culberson had an extensive grassroots campaign and won the runoff four weeks later 60%-40%. The general election was no contest in this GOP-dominant district. Read More

The congressman from the 7th District is John Culberson, a conservative Republican first elected in 2000. Culberson grew up in Houston, the son of the owner of an advertising agency. He graduated from Southern Methodist University, South Texas College of Law, and then worked as a civil defense lawyer. In 1986, at age 29, Culberson won a seat in the Texas House, where he served for 14 years. In 2000, Republican Rep. Bill Archer, Bush’s successor in the House, retired after being forced to give up the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee by Republican term limits. The front-runners in the GOP primary were Culberson and Peter Wareing, a Houston merchant banker and son-in-law of Texas oilman Jack Blanton. Culberson led Wareing in the first round 38%-27%. Wareing spent nearly $4 million to Culberson's $650,000, but Culberson had an extensive grassroots campaign and won the runoff four weeks later 60%-40%. The general election was no contest in this GOP-dominant district.

Culberson calls himself a “Jeffersonian Republican” and is passionate about transferring power from the federal to local governments. He was the House’s 10th most conservative member in 2010, according to National Journal’s rankings. He cosponsored Florida GOP Rep. Bill Posey’s 2009 “birther” bill requiring future presidential candidates to offer proof of citizenship in response to far-right theories about President Barack Obama being born overseas. During the final days of the 2010 health care debate, he attended a Capitol Hill rally of the bill’s opponents and tossed loose pages of the 2,000-page document to the crowd. Like his predecessor, Archer, he dreams of junking the current tax system and replacing it with a national sales tax. Culberson sometimes goes his own way. He ruffled feathers as one of only two Texas Republicans to oppose the $400 billion Medicare expansion of 2003.

An amateur astronomer and self-proclaimed science buff, Culberson is an enthusiast for NASA and has an interest in nanotechnology research, which is a specialty at Rice. He also is an avid fan of Twitter and in 2009 was the House’s top user of the social media account, according to a University of Maryland study. He was an early proponent of requiring the House to post all non-emergency legislation online at least 72 hours before debate, a rules change that Republicans enacted in 2011. He joined several conservatives in getting a provision into a 2011 spending measure that banned NASA from collaborating with China’s scientists.

Culberson has a coveted spot on the Appropriations Committee, which he has used to secure money for projects in his district, including medical research, flood control projects and funds for the Houston Ship Channel. He has fought with Houston officials who wanted money for local light rail projects, filing a formal objection with the Federal Transit Administration in December 2009 to stop a light-rail line because he said the local transit agency was in precarious financial shape—a charge agency officials said was based on outdated information.

In 2008, Culberson faced his first well-financed Democratic challenger. Wind energy executive Michael Skelly spent nearly $3.1 million, including $1 million from his own pocket. Culberson spent a relatively modest $1.8 million, which left some Republicans worried about a possible upset. Skelly criticized Culberson’s lack of support for alternative energy and said he was not sufficiently helpful to the space program, citing Culberson’s call to reduce the bureaucracy at NASA, which employs about 20,000 people locally. Culberson ran as a strong social and fiscal conservative, but suffered from discontent in the Republican grassroots over perceived weak enforcement of immigration law and a spike in deficit spending during the Bush years. Culberson won, 56%-42%. Two years later, however, Democrats did not even bother to challenge him and he beat a Libertarian candidate 81%-18%.